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The Legal Genius Who Weaponized Loopholes: Tracing El Avocato's Path from Master Forger to Fugitive Car Thief · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, a picture this. It's late Thursday night, maybe nine
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: point thirty. You get that quiet hum of a security checkpoint,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: those harsh floodlights cutting through the dark, and this Korean
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: sedan just pulls up. The driver. He looks sharp, confident,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: like he belongs there. They identify him, professor sayad, a lawyer.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: The picture of respectability, right totally.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: But then you know, the computer screen flashes yeah, and
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the story changes fast. Yeah for prior convictions and not
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: just that this calm, professional guy, he's a fugitive walked
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: right out of prison months earlier when security basically collapsed.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: It's quite the reveal, it really is. And look, this
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: isn't just about a shady lawyer cutting corners. This is well,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: it's a deep dive into how a really brilliant legal
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: mind deliberately chose crime, how he weaponized his knowledge. Today
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: we're tracing the pass of El Avocada, the lawyer, from
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a promising lgrad to a master forger and then something else,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: entirely a professional car thief.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: And that's the core question for us, isn't it. How
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: did that legal training actually shape his criminal career. We
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: want to figure out how he went from law school
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: to fugitive. How he built this fake identity and ran
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: a criminal operation that was frankly incredibly successful because he
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: understood the system's weaknesses.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just random crime, no, not at all.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: It feels very calculated, a transfer of skills, you could say,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: from law to crime.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So let's rewind, go back to Giza and Baba around
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: two thousand and two. Was his background.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Well, the story starts with his mother. Actually, his father
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: passed away and she really sacrificed, carried the financial load
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: to get him through law school. Her big dream for
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: him was stability, you know, a respected lawyer holding the law, the.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Classic immigrant dream in a way, or just a mother's dream.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and he had the potential. Sources say he was
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: naturally gifted, incredibly smart, picked up complex legal stuff almost instantly.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: But that intelligence, it went sideways.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: It seems like it pretty quickly. He developed this this perspective.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: He saw the law less as a tool for justice
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: and more like a game, a system to be manipulated. Right,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: you mentioned filawe like a hustle, exactly, a kind of
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: clever maneuvering, finding loopholes. He seemed to think that being
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: smart meant exploiting the system, especially if the client could pay.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Ethics weren't really part of the equation, so he.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Basically decided the rules didn't apply to him because he
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: was clever enough to get around them.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: That's the feeling you get, and legitimate law firms they
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: weren't going to go for that. So after about two years,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: around two thousand and seven, he realized that wasn't his path.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: If he wanted big money, real success, as he defined it,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: he needed to work with people who didn't care about
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: the rules either.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So he leans into the corruption, opens his own small
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: office kidkat Area, and he starts winning a lot.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but how he was winning that's the key. It
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: wasn't brilliant legal arguments. It was tazwir forgery.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Ah. So the success was built on faking it completely.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: He figured out, look, why argue the law when you
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: can just change the facts. Altering official documents, case file,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: even small changes could swing a judgment entirely his way.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: And he wasn't doing this alone, presumably, No.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: He built a network professional forgers, people inside government agencies
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: he could bribe to steal or tamper with records. It
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: was sophisticated he was delivering wins for his clients, but
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: it was all built on.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Fraud, and personally life seemed good.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: On the surface.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: By twenty ten, he's married, two kids, got this image
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: of success, and he seems to have genuinely believed it
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: was all down to his own cleverness, his fullawe. His
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: mother apparently pleaded with him, you know, fear God, but
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: he wasn't hearing it.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: But that kind of operation, it can't last forever. It's
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: inherently risky.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and it didn't last. In twenty ten that security
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: officials stumbled onto forgery in an official document during some
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: routine review. It traced back to him.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: That was it.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: That was pretty much it. Arrested, tried, sentenced to prison,
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: and the bar association they struck his name off the
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: rolls immediately. His respectable life, the one he literally forged,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: was over officially anyway.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: But then chaos intervenes. January twenty eleven, the revolution, prisons
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: break open.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Right, mass escapes cross the country and said, who is
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: already known inside as sid a l Avocado, the lawyer.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: He just walked out with everyone else.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: He's a fugitive now, yeh, what's his first move, does
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: he lie low?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: No, That lawyer's brain kicks right back in first priority
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: identity management. He immediately gets new official papers forged, changes
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: his name from Sayed to sayid okay.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Slate change but significant.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Very He knew he couldn't practice law officially ever again,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: couldn't open an office, so say the lawyer. That became
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: his cover story, his professional disguise. He'd meet people, potential clients, whatever,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: only in public places, cafes, mostly still.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Playing the part, just without the actual license or office exactly.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: And then comes this moment, completely random, apparently it changes
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: everything again.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: What happens.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: He's at a cafe doing his side the lawyer thing.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: He spots a parked car outside, same model as his own,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: a Korean Sedan two thousand and seven model, pretty common car. Then,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: just on impulse, apparently, he walks over, takes out his
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: own car key, and tries the door. No way it opens.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: He tries the ignition, the engine starts.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: You're kidding His key worked in a random identical car.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: That's the story, and the source calls it a devilish
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: idea that hit him right then and there. He doesn't hesitate.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: He drives the car off, parks it on some quiet
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: side street and m baba wow.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's that's a huge leap from forgery to
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: grand theft auto. Just like that.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: But he doesn't just ditch it again. The calculated mind.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: He searches the car first, finds the owner's details.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Smart or cunning, I guess right.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Then he waits, lets the owner's stew for two days.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Then he makes the call, introducing.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Himself in well hit the lawyer, the helpful mediator. Oh
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: this is brilliant in a terrible way.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: What's his story.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: It's a masterpiece of deflection. Yeah, he says, basically, look,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: my clients accidentally bought your car. The paperwork was bad,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: they didn't realize it was stolen. Now they're stuck. They
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: contacted me, the lawyer, to sort this mess out.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: So he's positioning himself as the solution, not the problem.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Precisely. He frames it like a business dispute, a mistake,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: suggest maybe they could just split the difference, avoid official headaches,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: get the car back quickly, and the owner it dost
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: be desperate by this point.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Totally desperate. The owner immediately agrees to pay offers twenty
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: thousand Egyptian pounds to get the.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Car back, and SAYID facilitates the return, does.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: The whole transaction in under two hours, gets the cash,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: hands back the car.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: So that twenty thousand e GP. How much was that
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: roughly in context?
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Well, it was a decent chunk of change. But the
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: real shock for him was the efficiency. Think about it.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: He made maybe what the equivalent of twenty five thousand,
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: thirty thousand dollars USD today, maybe more depending on the
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: exact conversion back then, in just three days, with almost
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: zero effort compared to his forgery.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Skins us Yeah, that's a powerful incentive.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: It completely changed his trajectory. Forgery required years, works, bribes,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: constant risk of long sentences. This accidental car theft insane
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: ROI return on investment.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: So the lawyer persona, the cafe meetings, Yeah, that just
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: becomes window dressing for the new hustle.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. He ditches the pretense of even fake lawyering
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: and goes full time into professional car theft. This accidental
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: success showed him a much faster, seemingly easier path.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Did he need to learn how to steal cars properly?
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Or did that quick mastery he had with law apply
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: here too.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Seems like the latter. He just got it, became an
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: expert almost overnight, focused on specific areas in Baba. Mohandsen.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Aguza targeted popular models he knew he could get into easily,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: and he's doing.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: This repeatedly throughout twenty eleven.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Multiple times a month. Yeah, and you have to remember
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: the backdrop twenty eleven post revolution chaos.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Right, the security vacuum we talked about exactly.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Police presence was minimal, courts weren't functioning properly, people were scared.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: It was the perfect environment for him to scale up
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: this operation without much fear of getting caught, and his.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Methods stayed the same. The helpful lawyer mediator that.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Was Plana the ransom strategy, always the friendly middleman. But
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: he had a plan B, which was if the owner
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: refused to pay or if he couldn't reach them quickly,
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: he didn't just abandon the car. He'd have it dismantled,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: immediately sold for parts to shady dealers.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: So he always won. He engineered it so there was
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: no losing scenario for him.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly, a no lost business model built on theft and exploitation.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to this crucial point, Why wasn't he
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: caught sooner if he's stealing multiple cars a month?
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: The reporting gap. This is where his legal background, his
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: understanding of psychology and systems, really paid off. How think
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: about it from the victim's perspective, Your car's stolen, your panicked.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Then two or three days later, you get a call
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: from this lawyer, sayid. He says he can get your
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: car back quick for a price. Okay, what's the alternative?
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: File a police report, deal with bureaucracy. Wait weeks, maybe months,
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: maybe never see the car again. The police are overwhelmed
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: anyway in this period.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: So paying the ransom, even though its extortion, feels like
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the quicker, easier, more certain option.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Precisely, it's the path of least resistance, the most rational
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: financial choice for many victims in that chaotic moment. So
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: most of them they paid up, got their car back quickly,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: and never filed an official police report.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: He understood the system's failure points and the victim's likely response.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: That's chillingly smart.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: It kept him under the radar for a remarkably long time.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: But you know, even the smartest systems have flaws, or
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: maybe people make mistakes.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: So the police did eventually start noticing something.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, by early twenty twelve, they started reviewing the few
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: reports that were filed and a pattern emerged.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: What was it better?
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: The timing cars consistently stolen between five am and six am,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: usually shortly after the owner parked it for the night.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Suggesting surveillance. Yeah, not random theft exactly.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: This wasn't some joy rider. This was planned, targeted, meticulous.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: And then came the case that broke it open.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, only twenty twelve. A younger victim this time, Saide
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: pulls the usual routine demands a high ransom two hundred
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: thousand AGP. Again big money, huge money. The victim tries
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: to negotiate, offers one hundred thousand and said, well, he
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: loses his cool for a second, gets angry.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: What does he say?
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: He threatens him says something like pay the full amount
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: or I'll chop the car in to pieces and send
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: them to you.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Oof. That's not the smooth mediator anymore, not at all.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: And that threat, combined with the location the five am
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: theft time it click for the police. This match the pattern.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: They realized this was.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Their guy, so they see their chance. What do they do?
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: They tell the young victim, agree to the price, agree
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: to the full two hundred thousand EGP, play along, set
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: a trap, exactly said. Apparently, thrilled about this big payoff,
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: starts coordinating the exchange. But he's slippery. Howso that paranoia
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: kicks in the instincts of a fugitive. Maybe he keeps
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: changing the meeting location multiple times just hours before the
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: plan handover.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Trying to shake off any potential surveillance.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: Right, But the police anticipated this. They didn't just stick
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: out one spot. They set up ambushes across three different
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: potential locations he'd mentioned. They covered their bases and it worked.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: They caught him, arrested him right there inside the stolen.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Car, and I bet he tried to talk his way
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: out of it.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Instantly defaulted straight back to his cover. I'm saying, comal
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: lawyer pulls out the forged ID, the fake bar card.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: But this time it didn't work.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: No, the police weren't buying it. A quick check the
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: ideas fake. They run his priens, figure out his real name, said, come.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: And connect him to the prison escape.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Everything unraveled, the fugitive status, the three prior forgery convictions,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: the whole carefully constructed facade dissolved. The lawyer who chose crime,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: whose cleverness fueled his rise and his fall, was finally
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: caught inside the very symbol of his criminal enterprise.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Wow, it's quite a story. The talent he had.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: That's the real tragedy here, isn't it. It's not just
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: that he lost his career. It's the complete waste, the
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: perversion of that intelligence. He was genuinely gifted, but.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: He chose the quick fix, the illegal.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Shortcut, consistently, first with forgery, manipulating the system from within,
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: then when chaos offered a new opportunity with outright theft,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: exploiting the system's collapse. He used his understanding of law, procedure,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: even psychology to become a highly effective criminal.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: So, thinking about this whole story, what's the takeaway for you,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: for the listener?
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: For me, it highlights that gap between intelligence and wisdom.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Sade was incredibly smart. He could master complex systems, but
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: he lacked the wisdom, the ethical foundation to use that
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: intelligence for anything constructive. He basically architected his own downfall.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: It makes you think, doesn't it. We're leaving you with
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: this final thought, Consider that moment in twenty eleven society's rules,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: law and order. They felt like they were temporarily suspended.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Was Saya just a product of that chaos, someone who
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: saw an opportunity in the breakdown and grabbed it? Oh?
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: What was this path set much earlier? The moment he
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: decided that exploiting a loophole being clever was more important
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: than being honest. Was the car theft just the inevitable
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: next step for someone who had already fundamentally rejected integrity?
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: That's the question, really, opportunity versus character. Where does one
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: end and the other begin when faced with that kind
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: of overwhelming temptation? Something to think about.